Poetry by Pablo Neruda and To Pablo Neruda by Erica Jong Fast

Fresh Red Strawberries in Blue Dragon Bowl by Marion

Poetry
By Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

~Pablo Neruda

It was Erica Jong Fast's poetry that led me to Pablo Neruda.  I share the poem here which led me to his amazing works:

To Pablo Neruda
By Erica Jong Fast

Again & again
I have read your books
without ever wishing to know you.

I suck the alphabet of blood.
I chew the iron filings of your words.
I kiss your images like moist mouths
while the black seeds of your syllables
fly, fly, fly
into my lungs.

Untranslated, untranslatable,
you are rooted inside me--
not you--but the you
of your poems:

the man of his word,
the lover who digs into the alien soil
of one North American woman
& plants a baby--
love-child of Whitman
crossed with the Spanish language,
embryo, sapling, half-breed
of my tongue.

I saw you once--
your flesh--
at Columbia.
My alma mater
& you the visiting soul.

Buddha-like
you sat before a Buddha;
& the audience
craned its neck
to take you in.

Freak show--
visiting poet.
You sat clothed
in your thick
imperious flesh.

I wanted to comfort you
& not to stare.
Our words knew each other.
That was enough.

Now you are dead
of fascism & cancer--
your books scattered,
the oil cruet on the floor.

The sea surges through your house
at Isla Negra,
& the jackboots
walk on water.

Poet of cats & grapefruits,
of elephant saints;
poet of broken dishes
& Machu Picchu;
poet of panthers
& pantheresses;
poet of lemons,
poet of lemony light.

The flies swarm
thicker than print on a page,
& poetry blackens
like overripe bananas.
The fascists you hated,
the communists you loved,
obscure the light, the lemons
with their buzzing.

We were together
on the side of light.
We walked together
though we never met.

The eyes are not political,
nor the tastebuds,
& the flesh tastes salty always
like the sea;
& the sea
turns back the flies.

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